Quite often, different people use the same computer through the same account and yet, they expect to be able to use their favorite instant messaging application independently.

Currently SIP Communicator supports this functionality and allows setting a user specific environment but achieving it requires technical skills far beyond the level that most users would have.

We like the way this issue is resolved by the applications in the Mozilla suite (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc..) All of them support a tool called a “Profile Manager”:

The profile manager allows users to create and select personal application environments (profiles). When starting the application (Debian’s Iceweasel in this case), users are prompted through the Profile Manager Dialog to select the environment that they would have to use during this session.

In the case of SIP Communicator an environment would contain user specific settings such as protocol accounts, meta contact list, message, and call history.

The profile manager would also have to allow creating new profiles, as well as modifying or removing the existing ones. Following is a sample screenshot of the wizard that does this for IceWeasel

A configuration form would also have to be added in the SIP Communicator configuration utility so that users can enable or disable profile selection on startup.